By Ember
There once stood a tailor's shop in the middle of a large, prosperous city, so wealthy the streets seemed cobbled in gold and success. The mead halls were filled with joyous conversation, the inns with tired travellers, the markets with fresh goods, and loaded purses. The King of the land had recently signed a treaty with the three kingdoms surrounding his, and had ended a war over resources by marrying off his daughter to a prince, merging their resources through matrimony.
All seemed well in this happy city, and there lived a Seamstress, her shop was filled with only the most luxourious works she could muster, her husband quite happily ran the front of the store, and took orders, and the Seamstress sat in back, working away on her newest masterpiece. It seemed that nothing could go wrong.
For years the kingdom seemed to be on the pinnical of prosparity, jammed with joy, rich with resources, and growing at a great rate, the kings of the four kingdoms had been working together in perfect union, that is, until a mysterious plague overtook the land.
The plague took root in the same kingdom that the King's daughter had been married into, spreading fast. The other kingdoms were swift in offering aide to their ill bretherine, that is, two of the other three. The King offered only to research, claiming that offering direct aide to his daughter's kingdom would only put his people in danger of catching the plague.
The other kings were angered at his decision, and continued to offer direct aide to their sister kingdom, quickly finding his words to hold true, as their people, too, came down with the plague. The two kingdoms swore vengeance upon the King, filled with hatred towards his wise prediction. When they had successfully managed to contain their ill, they mobilised their armies in an attempt to overtake the King by surprise.
The King had been warned by spies he had planted in each of their courts, and had already prepared himself an army, enlisting every able-bodied man in town, including the Seamstress' husband, the Tailor. The Tailor, despite his disposition towards warfare, was given no choice. He had been summoned to fight for the King, and it was his duty to his beloved land.
The Seamstress suggested the two run away to her mother's home in the woods, but the Tailor declined, reminding her that, despite his hatred towards warfare, he owed it to his king, and his kingdom to fight for their safety. The Seamstress cried on his shoulder, and the Tailor gave her a promise, one that burned itself into the Seamstress' mind, forever; “Hold your chin up, my dear, I'll only be out for a few weeks, when I come back, I expect to see that masterpiece you've been talking so excitedly about completed, okay?”
he nodded in agreeance, and they shared their final kiss. The Tailor walked towards the castle as stated in his summons, for his training. Days went by, the war grew bloodier, more and more men returned, wives, sons, daughters all cried at the loss of their husbands, their fathers, their friends, but one man hadn't turned up yet, the Seamstress held hope in her heart that the Tailor might return alive after all.
After his leaving, the Seamstress did, in fact, spend most of her time working on her masterpiece, oft forgetting to eat, drink, and sleep for days on end, in hopes that if she might finish it, he'd come back to see it sooner. Weeks went by, she grew closer and closer towards finishing the large dress she had been working on, a gift for the Queen, she had only to finish the hem, and some embroidery and it would be ready for her husband to see.
She heard three knocks on her door, long after dark. A sudden chill filled the air, and the light from her lantern seemed to go out. Three more knocks, with an urgency that held no subtility, three knocks that resonated in her soul, she felt her heart sink as she came to the front of the shop, and slowly opened the door.
She didn't utter a word, she didn't shed a single tear, she slowly closed the door on the captain at her door, and went back to her masterpiece, sewing faster, and faster, and faster, until she pricked her finger on the needle. She pulled the needle back through the fabric and watched as the droplet of blood formed, and dropped onto the fabric, staining the crisp, glowing white fabric a deep, crimson.
The seamstress looked over to the needle, completely unstained, shining bright in the dull lantern light. So sharp she didn't even feel the prick of her finger. She looked back at her finger, a second drop starting to form, and stopping before it came to a critical mass, leaving a small blob of drying blood on her finger tip.
She turned around in her seat, looking over at all of the fabric in her shop, soft, warm, all pristine, just as it had been when her husband left for the last time. The Seamstress grabbed a needle, grabbed some threat, and slowly walked past her fabric selection, until one seemed to call out to her. A deep, deep coal grey. She took the material over to her cutting table and began to cut away at it, having inspiration overtake her.
The next morning came, the sun being overcast by dark rainless clouds. The seamstress had finished what she had set out to work on the night before, a glove, four long clawed fingers sit on it, metal lay under them, leaving them sharp enough to cut fabric or leather. Only one step left. She picked a black thread, took up a needle, and passed it into a thick piece of cow's hide. It passed clean through without the slightest trouble. She threaded her needle, years of sewing made it trivial at the worst. She slid her arm into the glove, it came up around to her elbow, and was a bit loose-fitting, so she began to stuff it with scraps of fabric, and bits of wool, trying to make it nice and full, round, and beautiful.
She pressed the needle into the fabric, and past her own fabric, feeling a slight pinch, and seeing blood well out of the needle's path. She didn't as much as wince as she passed it through again, and again, pinning her work of art to her blank canvas, making her next masterpiece one that the Tailor would never forget.
Upon completing her project, she looked down at her dress. It was apalling to her, so plain, so clean, so isolated from her new canvas. She took to working on her second stage, taking to sewing the fabric directly to her without cutting anything first, working it around her chest, and neck, heating the needle to cauderise the needle wounds as it passed through her. She felt nothing other than an excitement, that thirst to see what comes out of one's own mind, that magnificent feeling of finding out what you make after so many hours of hard work and labor.
When nighttime came, and the moon had risen high in the sky, the Seamstress walked up to her bedroom, a room she had not gone in since the very night before her husband left for war, and took a look in the mirror, and smiled wide at her work. Her left arm had been turned into the perfect set of fabric shears, and her body now had been converted into something that the Tailor could be surprised by when she was reunited with him, she thought.
She was overcome with disgust upon viewing her left shoulder, right arm, and face, and retreated to her workshop to finish her masterpiece. Days and days of work, no food, no water, no sleep, just work, just as it had to be. She just had to prepare her masterpiece for him, then he'd come back. He couldn't be dead, the captain had been mistaken, she thought, she couldn't be alone, she just had to make him something beautiful to come home to, and he'd come back.
Her right arm became a tool for holding needles, her right hand now sewn and wrapped to make using a needle its only use, her face covered in tight fabric, fabric and metal horns sewn to the top of her head to give her a place to put her thread, long fabric ears sewn to her to allow her to hear her husband when he returned, spare material sewn to her legs, leaving them unrecognisable, her left hand simply a tool for cutting fabric. The Seamstress became the tools she needed, and never stopped working on her masterpiece, the one the Tailor would come back for.
Even as the other kingdoms broke through the walls and burned the city, the tailor's shop stood strong, the knights entered the building, hoping to loot it, rape, and pillage, but upon seeing the Seamstress, they turned and ran from the twisted masterpiece she had been working on. She had been frowning more, after the King had died, as she had a clear view of his head on a pike, so, she retreated to her room, looked in the mirror, and fixed it. She had a smile sewn in, now, nothing could take that away from her.
All that she had to do was keep improving her masterpiece until he came back, that was the answer, that was her life, improvement after improvement. After a while, she began to model her masterpiece after the dragons her and the Tailor would talk about at night, the Tailor had loved dragons, so the Seamstress was to model her work after one, briliant colours, tight embroidery for the scales, large wire-framed fabric wings to go with the look.
She waited at the door for him, hoping this would be enough for him to return, but the door stood, closed. She went back to work for days and days, weeks, months, what was time at this point? The tailor's shop had began to crumble and crack, the woodwork becoming as warped as the Seamstress' mind had, but she couldn't see anything but her masterpiece, and its imperfections that had to be the reason that the Tailor had never come home. She just hadn't been good enough at her craft, the captain had been mistaken, it was all her fault.
She kept sewing until finally, one day, the gods had seen enough of her eternal suffering, and had allowed her to finally rest, but the nature of her craft had lead her to become ensnared in her own delusion, and even after death, she continued to sew, eternally perfecting her masterpiece in hopes that it may bring her husband back to her.